From molding hundreds of chocolate human ears for a holiday party at an ears, nose and throat clinic to preparing gift baskets, the holidays are a busy time for Custom Chocolate.

This fall the company opened a new retail candy store at the corner of Lexington and Larpenteur avenues in Roseville, making this year even more chaotic than usual.

After 22 years in business, Custom Chocolate is making a significant move into retail for the first time. The 1,000-square-foot shop is a major upgrade from the 200-square-foot display and retail space in the front of the company's production center.

Paul Schmid, who owns Custom Chocolate with his wife, Janet, said the retail store is off to a fast start.

"So far our sales have exceeded our projections in the retail," Schmid said. "We think that's going to be an ongoing situation, where as more people find out, the better we will do and the more traffic that will be driven there."

The retail location formerly housed a Fanny Farmer chocolate shop that went out of business this fall. Custom Chocolate moved quickly to lease the space and many customers were not initially aware of the change.

"People at first still thought it was Fanny Farmer," Custom Chocolate retail store manager Judy Kruger said, "but once they come in and look around, they think it's better."

The most notable difference is the wide selection of molded chocolates. Custom Chocolate boasts an inventory of nearly 3,000 molds and offers items such as chocolate Eiffel Towers, poker chips and tool kits at its retail shop.

The company's line of Minnesota-themed candy with names such as Loon Eggs and Birch Bark has also been a hit, Kruger said.

With the retail store's successful start, Schmid said he might look into opening a second location sometime in the long-term future.

"It's hard to say when we would do that, but somewhere down the road, we think that could be a very easily accomplished situation," Schmid said. "Once we kind of work out the bugs here (the Roseville location), we could pretty much duplicate the same type of feeling out there."

The retail store should help push the company's revenues to more than $1 million this year, Schmid said.

Vicke Hegedus, who co-owns Abdallah Candies in Burnsville with her husband and son, said Fanny Farmer's demise has helped small local candy companies, but many choose to operate mall kiosks during the Christmas, Valentine's Day and Easter shopping seasons instead of running year-round retail stores.

Hegedus said Abdallah Candies has cut back from three retail locations to one in recent years because it is more cost effective for the company to sell its candies wholesale to other retailers than to operate its own shops.

But as Custom Chocolates expands its retail presence, the company remains focused on its custom molding chocolate business. Local giants 3M, Best Buy and General Mills have all used Custom Chocolates to mold their logos into chocolates for corporate events.

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